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Wednesday, 25 July 2018

Katie Hopkins LIES About Owen Jones

The appearance on broadcaster LBC of not only former UKIP Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, but also deeply unpleasant white supremacist Steve Bannon, who has told the far right that when they are correctly identified as racists, they should “wear it as a badge of honour”, has caused significant anxiety, and not just among the Rotten Lefties™. So it is that the pushback against both individuals has begun.

Viewers may still want to look away now

This is, of course, in addition to noises emanating from LBC that Farage will be the one who goes in order to make way for new hire Eddie Mair, who arrives from the BBC in September - so those objecting may be pushing at an open door. Nevertheless, campaigner Owen Jones has put together a video where he asks if some of the advertisers linked with the Farage show really want their brands promoted alongside him.

“Rightwing extremism’s on the rise - and LBC is legitimising it. Are major companies like @BritishGas, @Experian_UK and @TKMaxx_UK happy to associate their brands with it? Watch this video on how we can #DumpFarage … to stop the far-right becoming mainstream” he has told. But not everyone approves of his campaign.

Still out there on the fringes of reality, pro-am motormouth Katie Hopkins, who is not bitter and resentful at her own inability to keep hold of a media career that has progressively turned to dust in her hands, honestly, snapped “This gentleman had me removed from @LBC and was rewarded with a guest presenting slot in my place. This is learned behaviour. Do not feign surprise”. Er, no he didn’t.

What killed Hatey Katey’s LBC career stone dead was her own reaction to the Manchester Arena bombing, when she Tweeted “22 dead. Number Rising. Schofield. Don’t you even dare. Do not be part of the problem. We need a final solution”. The result?

It was clear that Ms Hopkins knew she had messed up when she changed the offending words to “We need a true solution” and then tried to explain it away as a “typo”. From that point on, she was in deep trouble. The fateful Twitter excursion was reported to the Police. But more people complained to LBC. And it was those complaints that yielded results.

So while Owen Jones tells “Proud to have led that boycott. Katie Hopkins is no longer a respectable public broadcaster: she's been driven to spout her increasingly far right white supremacism on the creepiest corners of the internet”, Ms Hopkins knows, but is unable to accept, that what got her kicked out of LBC was her own behaviour.

Likewise, it is Nigel Farage’s behaviour - and that of his entourage, including that of Steve Bannon’s sad Mini-Me Raheem “call me Ray” Kassam - that will persuade LBC management that he, too, should follow in the Hopkins tradition out the exit door.

And that won’t be Owen Jones’ fault, either. I’ll just leave that one there.